Chapter 7
Dervla
As much as I hate to say it, the peace and quiet of having the house to myself is nice.
Although I already miss the guys. They have become a part of my life now, and I know I couldn’t do any of this without them.
The way they just moved into my house without asking and took over is now a comfort rather than an annoyance.
Crawling onto the bed, I grab a sandwich and eat it hastily before curling up under the covers.
I can’t sleep without them here, but I can try to shut down for a few minutes if my brain will let me.
Troy lurking, looking all campus-innocent, so the guards didn’t jump him, is interesting rather than threatening.
He has dropped off the face of the earth since he confronted me on my doorstep and crushed my hand, revealing my weakness.
I lift my right hand and flex it. It hurts now that I’m thinking about it.
With all this shit going on, I’d almost forgotten about it.
I reach over for the bottle of water on the bedside table and some painkillers, swallowing them back and then flopping back to stare at the ceiling.
What could he want? Does it even matter?
He is a gnat in the grand scheme of things.
My phone buzzes against the duvet.
I freeze.
For one second, I just listen to the house. Pipes. Rain. Nothing else. Then I drag the phone over and check the screen.
Unknown number.
Of course.
I let it ring out.
It stops.
Then starts again immediately.
I stare at it until annoyance beats caution by a hair. Then I answer without moving from the bed. “If this is another old man with selective information, I’m hanging up.”
A woman’s voice comes down the line, slightly amused. “You have your mother’s bite.”
Every muscle in my body locks.
I sit up so fast the mattress dips under me. My hand tightens around the phone. “Maeve.”
“As much as I’d love to chat and get to know you, I don’t have much time. I didn’t do it. I’ve been framed—” The call cuts off, and my blood runs cold.
Then it lights up with the fires of hell, and I throw the phone so hard at the wall that it cracks the screen.
“Fucking, hell no!” I roar, shoving my hands into my hair and tugging hard enough to hurt my scalp.
Hot tears prick my eyes as the frustration of another junction with multiple exits crashes down around me.
With a growl of fury, I shove the covers off and retrieve my phone, dialling Alanna.
“Yes, dear,” she says.
“Maeve just called me. She said she didn’t do it, that she was framed,” I clip out without pleasantries. Who has time for hello, how are you when your life is crashing down around you and then being set on fire? Again.
“Come again?”
“You heard me the first time,” I snarl.
Alanna is quiet for half a beat too long. When she speaks again, every trace of dry amusement is gone.
“How long was the call?”
“Ten seconds. Maybe less.”
“What number?”
“Unknown.”
“Did she ask where you were? Who was with you? Did she say anything else?”
“No. She said I had my mother’s bite, then she said she didn’t do it, she’d been framed, and the call died.”
“She said that? Word for word?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
It’s not a weighted one.
It’s one where neither of us knows what to do or say anymore.
“This is getting exhausting,” she says eventually.
“You don’t fucking say,” I agree, just as wearily. “Do you have proof it was Maeve, or just a best guess?”
“A pretty good guess based on past experience. Did she sound frightened, or in control, or what?”
“Amused. Oh, she also said she’d love to chat and get to know me, but she didn’t have time.”
“Amused?”
“Amused by my tone when I answered the phone.”
More silence.
“What do I do?”
“You don’t believe her for a start. This is typical Maeve.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know this woman at all, so typical behaviour or not isn’t something I can use as a guide on how to deal with this.”
“Call Whitmore. Then call Séamus. In that order.”
I blink. “Why Whitmore first?”
“Because Séamus will react. Whitmore will think. Right now, you require both, but not out of order.”
That annoyingly makes sense. “You sound pleased with yourself.”
“I sound correct. Do it. Now.” She hangs up.
“Right. Whitmore.” I search through my contacts until I find the number for the Admin building and dial it.
Siobhán answers. “St. Augustine’s Admin.”
“Siobhán, it’s Dervla. I need to speak to Whitmore.”
“He’s in a meeting,” she says crisply. Too crisply.
That’s when the blood drains from my face, and I realise we cocked up. We are all standing in Whitmore’s office, talking about Whitmore and my dad and the mafia, and Siobhán was listening in to the whole thing with her bug. Fuck.
“It’s urgent,” I say, trying to sound casual, even when my brain is ticking over.
“Sorry. He said no interruptions.” She hangs up.
What?
I stare at the phone for a moment. Her attitude was the polar opposite of what it was the other day.
Cillian and your dad go way back. Went.
This slip-up crashes into my head like a bomb went off. I don’t know why, but it suddenly seems more sinister than the first time I rehashed this. I don’t even know why I think it’s sinister. I call the number back.
“St. Augustine’s Admin,” Siobhán says, her voice like ice.
“Put him on,” I say.
“No.”
The line goes dead.
For a second, I just stand there with the phone to my ear, listening to nothing.
Then I hit dial on Aidan’s number.
He picks up on the second ring. “What’s wrong?”
“Get back here. Now.”
“What happened?”
“Maeve called me. Then Alanna told me to call Whitmore before Séamus. I called Admin. Siobhán answered. She blocked me twice. Something’s wrong.”
A beat. “How wrong?”
“We forgot she had a bug in Whitmore’s office. She heard everything. I don’t know what I’m thinking, but her tone just changed completely from when we spoke to her the other night.”
“We’re two minutes away.”
I contemplate calling Séamus, but I don’t. Something stops me. Something is up, and now all my suspicions are pointing directly to the woman who was sleeping with my dad.
Think.
If Siobhán heard everything in Whitmore’s office, she now knows things she shouldn’t.
Namely that Whitmore is in play. She didn’t know that before.
If she did, if Dad had told her that, she’d have mentioned it instead of acting like he was the devil.
Which means Dad never told her. Which means… he didn’t trust her.
Or trust her enough.
Was he using her?
Was she using him?
Fuck. I’m not closer to any of this, and now I’m getting pissed off as I pull my boots on.
The front door bursts open, and the guys clatter up the stairs. “What’s the plan?” Cormac asks.
“I’m calling Roisin. Did you find her and Gallagher?”
“We spotted them, but then you called. We didn’t find Troy.”
I nod and hit dial on Roisin’s number.
“Dervla—”
“Move out to the Admin building now. I think Whitmore is in trouble.”
“From who?” she asks, but I can hear her and Gallagher moving.
“Siobhán,” I clip out, pulling my coat on and gesturing to the guys with my head to move it.
We head down the stairs, and I pull the door open. “Keep the line open, we are moving too.”
“You aren’t supposed to leave the house,” she hisses.
“Look, I spoke to Maeve, however briefly,” I say, shouldering my way past the guards and leaving my guys to deal with them however they see fit. “I’m unconvinced by her supposed guilt. Siobhán, however, is up to her neck in this and not just as the woman who was fucking my dad.”
Rain drenches me as I stride across the road and onto the campus grounds. My guys surround me, Séamus’ men close behind, clearly deciding their lives aren’t worth leaving me alone, but nor are they getting me back into that house with my guys circling me.
I love that they trust me not to ask questions and annoy me further by having to go over it all play-by-play.
My boots squelch on the muddy grass of campus, but we don’t slow our pace. I see Roisin and Gallagher approaching from the east in the distance.
“I see you,” Roisin says.
“Back at you,” I reply, and then we go silent, keeping the line open in case shit goes sideways. Which, let’s face it, it probably will.
“Something’s off,” Aidan says beside me, voice low
“Yeah. Siobhán,” I mutter and pull Henrietta out of my coat pocket.
We cut across the quad at speed. The place is empty, with the closure after Padraig’s execution, and only the staff are still on the premises.
Roisin and Gallagher meet us at the foot of the Admin steps.
Roisin’s hair is plastered back by rain, her split lip a dark line against pale skin. Gallagher looks less like the stoic professor and more like he was carved out of bad news. His coat is open, one hand inside it, not casual in the slightest.
“You think Siobhán’s some kind of criminal mastermind?” Roisin asks without preamble.
“I think she was using my dad, she buddied up to me, she heard everything in Whitmore’s office where he told me he was working with my dad, and then blocked me twice when I tried to get to him.”
Gallagher’s face hardens. “That’s enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“For me to stop pretending this could be a misunderstanding.” Roisin glares at the guards. “They stay here.”
“Perimeter sweep,” Gallagher instructs them, and they obey without a single hesitation. That tells me all I need to know about whose side Kevin is on.
“Straight up to Whitmore’s office,” I say, shoving the Admin Building doors open.
The foyer is dim and too quiet. Our footsteps hammer over old tiles and echo up the stairwell. Every sound feels wrong. Too loud. Too exposed.
I take the stairs first.
We go up hard and fast. Roisin is beside me. Who’d have thought? Cormac is close enough behind me that I have to watch for him tripping over my feet. Declan and Aidan flank without speaking. Gallagher leads by half a step, one hand inside his coat, head up, listening.
The corridor to Whitmore’s office stretches ahead, long and polished and empty.
Too empty.
Then we hear a ping. The gunshot, suppressed but clear as fucking day, echoes down the corridor.
We dive for cover, and I hit the floor so hard my hip slams the skirting board.
Roisin drops beside me. Cormac collides into my back a second later, one hand braced over the back of my neck, forcing me flatter as another muted shot cracks through the corridor. Plaster spits from the wall opposite.
“Office,” Gallagher says, low and lethal.
He moves first.
I barely see him. One second, he is at the corner with his coat flaring behind him, the next, he is a dark shape cutting down the corridor with his gun out. Aidan follows on the other side, fast and clean. Declan goes low. Cormac stays on me for one beat longer.
That indicates one shooter, outnumbered.
Gallagher kicks the door in, and Aidan moves in first, gun raised with me right behind him.
He stops, and I slam into the back of him. I peer around his wide frame and then swear.
“Fuck. He’s dead.”
“Yeah, that’s dead,” Declan says, moving into the room when Aidan moves forward, and stares at the hole in Whitmore’s head.
“Wow,” I say. “That is not the work of an amateur.”
“But was it Siobhán?” Roisin asks, already heading back out into the hallway.
I follow her. “One way to find out.”
She grins, and we move.
“Not without us,” Aidan says as the men fall in behind us.
Roisin is half a step ahead, then I edge past her because if Siobhán is in this building, I want to be the one who sees her face first.
“Stairwell,” I say and kick the door open.
The rapid echo of footsteps dropping fast hits me.
We tear after her. Cormac catches the stairwell door before it swings shut and shoves it wide enough that it cracks against the wall. I vault down the first few steps, keeping one hand on the wall for balance.
Another shot cracks from below.
The bullet punches into the wall by the turn of the stairs. Stone chips sting my cheek.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pressing my fingers to it, but it’s nothing.
Gallagher fires back once, clean and measured, more suppression than hit.
We take the next flight lower, pressed tight to the inner wall.
Roisin glances at me. “She knows the building better than we do.”
“Not for long.”
We hit the next landing. The stairwell door below slams hard enough to rattle the frame.
“Ground floor,” Aidan says.
Gallagher moves past us with the brutal efficiency of a man who has stopped pretending he is anything but dangerous. He takes the next flight down fast, gun up, shoulders squared.
Cormac stays where he can block a bullet with his body if he has to, while I barrel after Gallagher.
We reach the bottom landing and burst out onto the ground-floor corridor. The place is deserted. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. Rain lashes at the narrow windows in the doors at the far end.
Then movement.
A navy coat flashes through the records office door to the left.
The door swings shut. Aidan hits it with his shoulder before it catches and fires off a shot.